Beschreibung:
The goal of this study was to provide useful data on how street gang crime patterns (by amount and type of offense) relate to common patterns of street gang structure, thus providing focused, data-based guidelines for gang control and intervention. The data collection consists of two components: (1) descriptions of cities' gang activities taken from an earlier study of gang migration in 1992, IMPACT OF GANG MIGRATION: EFFECTIVE RESPONSES BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1992 (ICPSR 2570), and (2) gang structure data from 1995 interviews with police agencies in a sample of the same cities that responded to the 1992 survey. Information taken from the 1992 study includes the year of gang emergence in the city, numbers of active gangs and gang members, ethnic distribution of gang members, numbers of gang homicides and "drive-bys" in 1991, state in which the city is located, and population of the city. Information from the 1995 gang structures survey provides detail on the ethnic distributions of gangs, whether a predominant gang structure was present, each gang structure's typical size, and the total number of each of the five gang structures identified by the principal investigators -- chronic traditional, emergent traditional, emergent integrated, expanded integrated, and specialty integrated. City crime information was collected on the spread of arrests, number of serious arrests, volume and specialization of crime, arrest profile codes and history, uniform crime rate compared to city population, ratio of serious arrests to total arrests, and ratio of arrests to city population.